Dead
by 10111993
Summary: My (short) interpretation of that battle where Fred dies. Instead of Fred, Ron is killed.


"Expelliarmus!" The wand flew out of the death eater's hand, journeying to its last use.  
With a crack, the masked figure fell to the ground, a model of what he had done the most of his life.  
Hermione pocketed the wand with disgust before turning back to the battle at hand. To her left, she could see a Death Eater raising its arms in a final gesture that she quickly cut off, not bothering to see who she had saved before swirling around in time to see a rapid flash of red.  
"Protego!"  
She ran through every list of counter-curses she had learned in her head, and in time executed them all, her precisely varying movements belying the figures that fell beneath them.  
'They deserve it' she told herself grimly. 'Buck up, Hermione, or you're going to be the world's most brilliant dead witch' But this was no practice exercise, and the terror that she felt overrode her calm decorum.  
Horrified, she found herself fumbling in her wording, and she looked on stuttering as a bolt of green shot towards her. But suddenly, two seconds later she found herself still alive and she turned around to direct a quick, grateful smile towards Fred before turning back.  
Pulling herself together, she surveyed the field, realizing that all of the death eaters were occupied in battle with someone or another. Hermione realized quickly that many witches and wizards were overwhelmed, and quickly put herself to use in assisting them, charging over to her right where two death eaters held their wands towards a man.  
Muttering a spell under her breath, she pointed her wand as she ran forward, hoping feverishly that Percy, who she had seen just emerge near his brother, would assist Fred.

Ron suppressed a verbal curse as he concentrated on his pronunciation.. Leng-aaauurdian levi-oooosa. Swish and flick. A grin tugged at his lips as he remembered his first year of hogwarts. The Death Eater fell almost without notice, as did the second one. If Lupin could see me now, he would have given me an OWL for that class, Ron thought grimly, grunting as he bumped into someone. With a quick counter curse, which he had, of course, been taught by Hermione, he felled his next victim and turned to see quickly who he had bumped into. "Oy, Percy, what are you doing 'ere?" Ron shouted disbelievingly, swiping his bangs back. "I think I'm going to resign from the ministry," he shouted back, the noise of shouting and spells creating background sound. Fred, who was nearby, began to reply, but Ron didn't get to hear what he said because he had seen the lone dark wizard, and the sound had rushed out of his ears as he sprinted forward in the dead silence, thinking of all the right reasons Fred couldn't die.  
"-a joke in your life."  
Percy grinned, a strange and never seen expression stretching his face into something that could have been called handsome, and was just about to reply when he saw the streak of green and the blur of dark movement.  
He fell.  
Percy couldn't remember later if he screamed, but somehow his wand was out of his robes and a streak of purple hurdling from the end of it, and he couldn't remember that either. All he saw was his dead brother's body. "NOOOOOOOOO!" Fred somehow must have realized something was wrong, because for some reason Percy remembered the confused expression on his face as he turned with Percy.  
Fred's reaction was slightly blurred to Percy, in face with his own quickly overriding emotions, but he would always remember the shock, denial, and then the too heavy truth. It broke Percy's heart to just watch him, even when his own was cracking. Fred had reached him first, collapsing to his knees to bow his head to his brother's neck, pounding weakly with a fist on his brother's back.  
He was facedown, and perhaps it was for the best, Percy miserably thought, because he didn't know what he would do when he saw the empty face. But he didn't know if it was worse, because unmoving, it was unnatural, his body laying eagled on the ground, and unnatural had never been something that he had dealt with well.  
Numbly, he walked over, falling likewise to his knees beside his brother, and when he leaned down, he pressed a kiss into the back of his little brother's head. The tears leaked from beneath the glasses, falling into the the crown.  
Around them, the battle was finally dying down, the Death Eaters dwindling under the constant seige of the witches and wizards determined to defend all that they had ever known. Hermione approached, winding her way through the figures. Then she stopped, as Percy had, and there was a cry of piercing cry as she screamed, and then she was running, sobbing there like the rest of them, collapsed in dirt.  
"no, no, no, no, no, no, no , no , no , no ,on ononononon-" Percy looked at her pityingly, able to pity in his transcendent state of mind that was for once not pompous but bewildered, wandering free of itself, and felt a peculiar pang as he gazed at the spilled length of mousy brown curls laying across its shaking owner. Funny that hair could be that curly, he thought numbly.  
George ascended the staircase of the western tower, a frightened twisting of his gut wondering if his twin, his best friend and brother, was alive. The relief of seeing his brother made his legs shaky but he stopped when he saw the grief etched on his face. no, no, no. This wasn't his brother. Suddenly, his legs were shaky again, and he wobbled a little as he approached, aware that Percy was clutching something, and crying, and he never cried, he was never anything but pompous.. It felt like the air had been punched out of him. Nothing could have prepared him for the sight of seeing his little brother's body. He had fallen to his knees and retched before he knew it, trembling.  
Suddenly, he was six again, and pointing his father's wand at a teddy bear.  
'There. That's for breaking our brooms.' And the bear had suddenly sprouted eight legs and black hair, and the screaming had covered their gleeful laughter.  
George closed his eyes, remembering when he had replaced the toothpaste with battery acid, remembering the awful keening of pain as he and Fred had sat guiltily around the corner.  
He felt sick.  
He looked up again, looking at the terrible grief that shook Fred. He had never seen him cry in his life past the age of two. He was the less emotional of the two, the least emotional in the family apart from Percy. But now there was no part of Fred that was dry, would ever be dry again. The tears didn't have to fall; George knew they would still be there year after year, invisible. He felt sick. He didn't want to think about years from now, a future which his brother was absent from. Dead. Gone. There would be no screaming infant, no flustered toddler, no awkward pre-teen.  
No wide eyed boy to rib, tease, poke or pull. No baby brother to discreetly look after; there would be a conspicuous absence where their best laid plans had fallen, now that there was no longer a doting sibling to pull them on.  
He was Dead.  
George began to sob.


End file.
